Quackery so powerful that a famous physicist rolls over in his grave

I confess, when that bizarre photograph appeared a few weeks ago of Trump in Riyadh, laying his hand on a glowing ball in the company of a couple of Middle Eastern dictators, I thought of a Tesla plasma ball.

Orac writes,

He claims to be able to alter the atomic structure of the aluminum in the outer shell of the shield to harness high-frequency tachyon energy.

MJD says,

Medical science has altered the morphology (i.e., particle size) of aluminum/antigen complexes to harness higher collision- frequency interactions with antibodies.

The Coca Cola company has used aluminum as a containment means wherein the visible spectrum of the outer shell has been modified to appear red in color and become more appealing.

In summary, aluminum is an amazing substance but its use and benefits in the Tesla Personal Oscillator remains highly questionable - Thanks Orac!

These devices are so full of not even wrong that I don't know where to begin. The "music of the spheres" idea goes at least as far back as the 17th century--Kepler was a believer. The idea, as I recall, is that there were supposedly only six planets because there are only five regular solids, with at least one version positing a different one between each pair of neighboring orbits.

I am agnostic as to whether tachyons exist, but if they do, the speed of light is a minimum speed for them. Slowing them down to light speed would require an infinite amount of energy, just as accelerating regular matter to light speed requires an infinite amount of energy. And they cannot carry information between points in our spacetime, because faster-than-light travel violates the principle of causality. That is, different observers may disagree on the relative timing of unrelated events, but if event A causes event B, then all observers will see A before B. If FTL travel were allowed, then some observers would see B before A.

I could go on, but I'll stop here.

You know, Nicola Tesla was badder than I gave him credit for!
Why, he invented tachyon devices at least 20 - 24 years before tachyons were even theorized!

Nicola Tesla 10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943), a man known to be as often wrong as right in electromagnetic theories. Best known for showing Thomas Edison to be an idiot, in terms of how to properly deliver electricity over any significant distances (alternating current vs Edison's direct current (Edison later recommended high voltage AC for the electric chair, just to show "how dangerous AC was and disingenuously, how safe (never demonstrated) DC was)).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon#History

Obviously, Tesla was made of tachyons. Really, really bored tachyons.
Or something. His electrical transmission by air over long distance suffered from some inverse square problem. ;)
As the inverse square law was known since 1604, you'd have thought that would've occurred to Tesla.

Oh, my bad. He's an angle from the right of Venus or something. Good thing nobody shook his hand when he had freshly arrived - molten lead temperatures of his flesh would've been quite unpleasant.

Who actually lays out their hard-earned $89.95 to buy this?

Probably next to nobody. One of the things that have proliferated on the Web is the funny/sad/bizarre/hopeless get rich quick scheme. The startup costs are so invitingly small: a domain name, a cheap hosting service, a prototype product mock-up or two. But the would-be scammers are still probably maxing out credit cards or filching all family savings to fund their brilliant inspiration they're SURE will conquer the world. Oh, the hubris of Big Dreams.... You can be confident that the vast majority of these clowns lose their nut within 18 months and run away with their tails between their legs, leaving a trail of disgruntled creditors behind. Pre-Internet, all traces of these scams would have disappeared, but now many of the Web pages remain, either floating in the ether or kept alive with a trickle of small payments hoping against hope that since i Built It They Will Eventually Come...

Whoever Life Technology was, I doubt he/they have any connection to Purple Light, the 'sellers' of Tesla Purple Energy products linked in Orac's update note at the head of the post. The Purple Light site lists a street address in Serbia, and the cost of Purple Energy appears to have dropped significantly, as a Tesla Purple Disc sell for 9.95 Euro ($11.17). The description of it's action is both more mundane and more contemporary:

Tesla Purple Disc is worn around the neck in most cases, although users often place it on acupunctural points on the body (painful areas) and in that way achieve the effect of Chinese traditional medicine. It can be also put underneat glass of water to energize it. It is important to be worn as much as possible, cause it speeds up spiritual growth.

... which is made easier by the fact it doubles as a fashion accessory, though the copy oddly fails to express that benefit. while I'm sure most minions will indeed believe that the Purple Disc does indeed achieve the effect of TCM, I doubt somehow ii will succeed in putting your local acupuncturist out of business.

Now, here is a topic that teh NWOR could contribute to, given her doubtlessly deep "Electric Universe" interest.

@MJD #2:

Medical science has altered the morphology (i.e., particle size) of aluminum/antigen complexes to harness higher collision- frequency interactions with antibodies.

Those are particles of aluminium, not individual atoms.

The Coca Cola company has used aluminum as a containment means wherein the visible spectrum of the outer shell has been modified to appear red in color and become more appealing.

By applying paint to the can's surface.

I suppose you could be taking the mickey with those examples, but given the rubbish you so often produce I honestly can't tell.

Or traveling faster than the speed of light, which would actually be something useful.

In cases like this it's always worth asking, what's the acceleration? An FTL spacecraft is of little use if the crew become strawberry jam on the rear bulkhead.

Lee Valley will happily sell you a whole range of reusable anodized aluminum suppositories for very little money (warning: don't use very little money in vending machines - it jams the works; stick with full-sized money), though none in purple. I suspect they would consider getting their supplier to make them in a custom color for a sufficiently large order, or you could get an anodizing shop to strip and re-anodize them.

Somewhere I have a lovely purple heatsink I anodized many years ago. The process is quite simple, but requires DC, not Tesla's icky AC (make aluminum object anode in electrolyte of about 10% sulfuric acid, grow adequate oxide layer, dye with common organic dye, "seal" oxide by boiling piece in water). I tried to convince one of my clients to get some of the parts for their pipeline inspection systems anodized in purple, to no avail. It might have helped if I'd known about the magic properties of purpleness.

to properly deliver electricity over any significant distances

use DC, like this.

Where might something like this http://www.cancerablation.com/ given its use of a mix of things being done, and not being done, in clinical trials currently?

These devices are so full of not even wrong that I don’t know where to begin.

The grifters are not concerned with making enough sense to be wrong / right. They are not concerned with the meanings behind the words they steal. These are just Worship Words thrown into the incantation in the hope that a few suckers will find them convincing enough to send money.

Oh ha! I could swear that the "Tesla Personal Oscillator " looks exactly like the little capsule that my FIL keeps his nitroglycerin pills in. Probably $2/each if you buy in bulk?

Oh, Nikola Tesla. So smart, so weird. He pops up as a character in a quite a bit of science fiction because he was just so weird that you could totally believe that he's a time traveler, or a vampire, or David Bowie.
But this cheap con? It would probably annoy the heck out of him.

@ Saadmar

Who actually lays out their hard-earned $89.95 to buy this?

Probably next to nobody.

I think you underestimate human gullibility. At last report they are still being used by some security people in Iraq who don't know any better.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/20/government-fake-bomb-dete…

Rich@8: MJD will have to answer to the Coca-Cola Company.

Where might something like this ht[]p://www.cancerablation.com/ given its use of a mix of things being done, and not being done, in clinical trials currently?

One might do well to separate the person you've run across* from whatever might be going on in the real world.

* See especially ht[]p://ipscell.com/tag/dr-jason-williams/

Orac:

.. " I may have gone too far with the metaphor"

Oh, I disagree.
Going too far would have to include referring to pyroclastic flows or tsunamis, black holes or event horizons ..

but even then, maybe not.

Edison later recommended high voltage AC for the electric chair

However, what was actually used for the dirty deed was pulsed DC -- It's a damn shame what they did to that elephant.

His electrical transmission by air over long distance suffered from some inverse square problem.

I'm not so sure about that; syntony of the earth-ionosphere waveguide could effectively have any resonant antenna anywhere respond as if it is in the near field. Remember, Wardenclyffe Tower was to be studded with powerful UV sources ostensibly to cause a conduction current through ionization.

Since this was during World War I a rumor spread, picked up by newspapers and other publications, that the tower was demolished on orders of the United States Government with claims German spies were using it as a radio transmitter or observation post, or that it was being used as a landmark for German submarines. Tesla was not pleased with what he saw as attacks on his patriotism via the rumors about Wardenclyffe, but since the original mortgages with Boldt as well as the foreclosure had been kept off the public record in order to hide his financial difficulties, Tesla was not able to reveal the real reason for the demolition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower#Demolition
I don't know if HAARP truely borrowed from Tesla but modulating the auroral electrojet (heating causes expansion) with hf gives a huge power gain sort of like an earth-sized super beta transistor -- It is very good for a type of low frequency ground penetrating radar that can remotely image most places on earth now.

@ jrk

Huh? I don't see any connection between the fake bomb detectors and the Tesla Personal Energy Shield (my bad in mis-stating the price as $89.95, as it was $179.95!).

I think you are actually underestimating human gullibility – the self-gullibility of would-be scammers, of which there are legions. I have no illusions about the vulnerability of the species to good scams – the 'bomb detector' is probably a good example – but successful scamming is one of those things to which many aspire but only a few succeed. I would guess that most folks who comment here are in career fields where there isn't much of a fringe of posers and BS artists continually starting up big-dream schemes they think will grab some public that never get any traction because, well, they're just bad. But my parents were professional musicians, and I went into the film/media stuff, and there are so many hapless wanna-bes in those that fields it would make your head spin. Most of them are more honorable than the wanna-be health con artists, but the unintentional comedy in the end product speaks to a similar psychology.

I've checked out several of the sillier woo-scams Orac has highlighted (e.g. QuantumMan, Coherence Apps...) and found no evidence the perpetrators ever made a dime. But given the amount – and worse, the venality – of BS humans beings do fall for, the fact we're not so gullible as to fall for anything and everything offers little comfort or reassurance. The point, I guess, is that if we're in the BS debunking business, we ought to be wise enough to distinguish what separates the effective scams from the hapless scam attempts. We can't pull out the hook unless we know what the hook really is...,

penetrate any material substance by osmosis.

I remember reading this post way back when. Just... wow. Hardly the most woo-y part of the advertisement, but osmosis without a solvent. Just, wow. You'd think they would bother to at least understand the words they're using, if not the physics.

I suspect a fair bit of their research is somewhat outmoded, due to the growth of both communication satellites and the internet.

Some of it is still relevant, for two reasons:
1. Submarines. If you want to communicate with them while they are under water, you need to use the ELF band, and you are depending on ionospheric properties to help you.
2. Transpolar airline routes. Satellites in geosynchronous orbit are below the horizon if you are poleward of 82 degrees geographic, so planes traversing this region have to use old-fashioned radio to communicate with ground dispatchers. When ionospheric conditions are such that they can't use this fallback, the planes have to use longer routes, meaning more fuel burned.

Oh, HAARP is now shuttered, government wise.

LoL. The Voice of America transmitter in Delano, CA has shut down but propaganda still thrives. There are HAARP-based 'ionospheric heaters' scattered all over America and around the world -- The one in Peru is four times the area of the Gakona, AK HAARP. Interestingly, A line pulled from the China one to the Peru one also exactly intersects the Delano transmitter.

http://www.w6lie.org/voa1.htm

If one assumes that Tropicana field in Florida is a secret HAARP station then a nifty pattern imerges:

HAARPagon:
http://postimg.org/image/ft4zaftbn/

Yes, Texas has a HAARP and the Arecibo Observatory is also plotted though the alignment is even more precise if the actual heater was just across the pond in Cuba.

Polar view:
http://postimg.org/image/8qb49j0cr/

...Tropicana field in Florida is a secret HAARP station...

The ball field? Really?

Has anybody thought of setting up an antenna and spectrum analyzer somewhere in town and capturing a mega-watt spike? You probably wouldn't even need much of an antenna.

Tim,

You know if add lead to tinfoil hat it works much better at blocking all those evil EMF rays. Also, buy yourself a large degausing loop to keep the those magnetic lines from interfering with your brain functions. You might add a lightning rod and ground cable just in case.

Yes, Johnny; It could just be ghosts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFN3so6C9ag

if add lead to tinfoil hat it works much better at blocking all those evil EMF rays

Lead? That is not a very good conductor the same with tinfoil -- As tin is a weak semiconductor, lead on tinfoil is liable to serve as a detector causing one to hear voices.

Tinfoil is crinkly loud, does not breath well, and is socially unacceptable. I recommend copper mesh.

,You’d think they would bother to at least understand the words they’re using, if not the physics.

New comparison: Criticising med-scammers for knowing and caring nothing about the meaning of the physics or chemical terms they steal to ornament their bafflegab is like criticising televangelists for mis-quoting Gospel. To an extent, it is missing the point. Med-scammers are not aiming for accuracy, any more than the likes of Falwell and Swaggart are concerned with the values of Christianity.

Moreover, the longer ago the scientist lived, the less chance of any pesky relatives caring enough to tell the woo-meister that his or her appropriation of said dead scientist’s work is a load of fetid dingo’s kidneys.

You forget about the Serbs who will get into a rage if anyone says that Tesla was a Croat, and the Croats who will get into a rage if anyone says that Tesla was a Serb.

Well, never mind any sign of antennas fed by co-ax as big around as your leg, or readouts from any sort of test equipment, that YouTube convinced me.

/sarcasm

At first I wasn't sure whether Tim was a Poe, but I recognized the facility in Peru he mentioned. Jicamarca is run by the National Science Foundation, Cornell University, and the Instituto Geofísico del Perú. I was unaware that it was part of the HAARP conspiracy theory, but Googling "jicamarca haarp" yields, in addition to the Wikipedia page for the observatory, a bunch of documents in both English and Spanish on Jicamarca's role in the conspiracy theorists' version of HAARP.

There is no government or scientific installation too small or insignificant, or even extant, that it can't be incorporated into a conspiracy theory. Indeed it is more often seen as an asset than a liability.

The ionospheric heating facility of the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) in Gakona, Alaska (62.4°N and 145.2°W) has been actively used to generate ELF/VLF (3 Hz–30 kHz) radiation by modulation of the overhead auroral electrojet currents for more than a decade

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgra.50230/full

Earth-penetrating tomography is a startling potential use of ionospheric heating. The method would work by beaming radio energy into the Auroral electrojet, the curved, charged-particle stream formed at high latitudes where the solar wind interacts with Earth's magnetic field. The radio energy then disperses over large areas through ductlike regions of the ionosphere, forming a virtual antenna that can be thousands of miles in length.

http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/VirtualClassroom/HAARP/acf.html

They're up in your Heavisides tomigenin your drug tunnels.

I was unaware that it was part of the HAARP conspiracy theory, but Googling “jicamarca haarp” yields, in addition to the Wikipedia page for the observatory, a bunch of documents in both English and Spanish on Jicamarca’s role in the conspiracy theorists’ version of HAARP.

Hey, I"m getting 1410 results for jicama plus HAARP.

This global electromagnetic resonance phenomenon is named after physicist Winfried Otto Schumann who predicted it mathematically in 1952. Schumann resonances occur because the space between the surface of the Earth and the conductive ionosphere acts as a closed waveguide. The limited dimensions of the Earth cause this waveguide to act as a resonant cavity for electromagnetic waves in the ELF band. The cavity is naturally excited by electric currents in lightning. Schumann resonances are the principal background in the part of the electromagnetic spectrum from 3 Hz through 60 Hz,[2] and appear as distinct peaks at extremely low frequencies (ELF) around 7.83 Hz (fundamental),[3] 14.3, 20.8, 27.3 and 33.8 Hz.

In the normal mode descriptions of Schumann resonances, the fundamental mode is a standing wave in the Earth–ionosphere cavity with a wavelength equal to the circumference of the Earth. This lowest-frequency (and highest-intensity) mode of the Schumann resonance occurs at a frequency of approximately 7.83 Hz, but this frequency can vary slightly from a variety of factors, such as solar-induced perturbations to the ionosphere, which compresses the upper wall of the closed cavity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schumann_resonances#Description

theyer upin yous Heaviside diddling with your circadian rhythm.

And it couples to the pineal gland. This has already been reviewed.

theyer upin yous Heaviside diddling with your circadian rhythm.

Why? What's their payoff?

And how do they avoid 'inflicting' their evil schemes on their wives, mothers, friends, and even themselves? I guess they are just some heartless sumbitches. And what happens to these evil government people when they retire? I assume they are taken care of for life. If so, how do I apply for an opening. Being Orac's minion is a fine hobby, but I'm hoping that being a world domination minion pays better.

I spent a few years pushing electrons for various government customers as a contractor, and was invited to join them, but they never mentioned any openings for a minion.

cause this waveguide to act as a resonant cavity for electromagnetic waves in the ELF band

Given the tiny magnitude of the Schumann resonances (despite an entire planet of lightning activity pumping energy into them), I'm going to guess that (1) the ionosphere is not a very good resonator, and (2) no human input is going to make much difference.

@HDB: It's a combination of that, and the fact that lightning isn't very efficient at exciting waves in the relevant frequency range. The Schumann resonances are a geometrical property of the Earth-ionosphere system, and they don't correspond to any characteristic frequency of the ionospheric plasma. Lightning does a better job of exciting what are called whistler waves, which are in the VLF range. It's much easier to get ionospheric electrons to shake at those frequencies.

Why? What’s their payoff?

IDK, maybe it is because They Live, we sleep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8AMRbqY6w

...no human input is going to make much difference.

Didn't you see the video at #28?

I mean, sure, there's no such thing as ghost, but what else could it be? I has to be mega-watts of RF going into dozens of undercover antennas fed by invisible co-ax. Why else would they build a sports stadium right there in town, if not to join up with a grid of other sites, no two of which have a common design?

/snark

I've seen that movie. It's almost embarrassing to say I sat thru the whole thing.

i hope it gets the MST3K treatment some day - it's the only way I could watch it again and not open a vein.

If I act now, can I get a second one?
And will they also throw in a cubit??

Would you settle for a cucurbit, MarkN?
Dibs on the term "qucurbit" to describe a method of performing quantum computing that involves super-cooled quantum-coherent pumpkins and cucumbers.

HDB, are you sure that 'qucurbit' (or 'cukorbit') isn't a long-deceased film director, with toothmarks?

If I were designing a large public monument I would definitely specify all the measurements in cubits. Then when it fell down I could describe the event as "A disaster of Biblical proportions".

@ Wzrd1 #4

Obviously, Tesla was made of tachyons. Really, really bored tachyons.

And shortly after inventing the variable nuclear grenade, he ran away to his private asteroid and watched time wars in parallel universes.

@HDB: I know you're joking, but if you take the Bible literally, then π = 3. In the passage where they are building the First Temple, a cylindrical object is described as having a diameter of 10 cubits and a circumference of 30 cubits.

This has nothing to do with the Indiana Pi Bill, which proposed a different incorrect value of π.